Steve Skojec Talks About His Experience with the Legionaries

Very interesting personal account of Life as a Legionary from Steve Skojec (ocassioned by an interview with Fr. Berg on the upcoming attempt by the Vatican to give the organization its long-overdue enema).

I basically knew nothing of the Legionaries (I’m not much of a joiner) but the account Steve writes is strangely reminiscent to me of some of the more controlling aspects of the “discipleship” movement that swept some of the non-denoms in the 80s and left its mark on my old Evangelical congregation. The thing is, Evangelicals have trouble getting it together with the whole “building a big institution” thing so while the culture at my old church could be pretty oppressive and conformist at times, it couldn’t penetrate all aspects of my existence. And when I discovered the liberty of the Catholic faith (and even more so, of the Dominicans where the prevailing ethos is “If you’ve met one Dominican, you’ve met one Dominican”) I felt as though I’d come home. One of the funniest critiques of the Catholic faith has always been the “The Pope tells you what to think. You beome one with the mnonolithic Borg” thing. Nothing could be further from my experience. The Dominicans are nothing if not celebratory of immense diversity and ordered freedom of the intellect. (I remember one priest making fun of St. Ignatius remark that he would believe black was white if the Pope commanded it. A Dominican has too much common sense for such absurd authoritarianism.)

Fr. Maciel however seems to have been an organizational genius who bent his efforts precisely in the direction of creating a simulacrum of Catholic “order” that existed in order to make an institution within the Church that was a) a cash cow and b) designed to serve and glorify (and protect) him. He used his considerable gifts in that department to create a vast machine organized around Him, protecting Him, covering for Him, suppressing normal human affections and interactions in order to create good soldiers for Him. His dupes seem to have been, almost entirely, good folk (as is always the case with con victims). But he created enormous damage nonetheless–the worst of it being that his dupes were inducted into a culture of Stockholm Syndrome for the guy exploiting, dominating, stunting, lying to, and abusing them and creating a command and control structure of domination in his image and likeness, if Steve’s and Fr. Berg’s account is accurate. I mean, heck, they are still being encouraged to revere the guy’s image and likeness. The old fraud made everything All About Him. That culture of denial is what the enema is all about.

Steve’s description of the soul-destroying encounters he and various others have had with the Legionary Conformity Machine helps me to understand how the system could create the weird paradox of a seemingly “well-formed” Catholic who is nonetheless so emotionally and developmentally immature, stunted and dependent on the command and control structure that even after Maciel is definitively exposed as an evil SOB, the weird accolades and happy talk just continue being emitted by the Machine. He designed it to do that, so of course it does it. That machine needs to be dismantled piece by piece. The question is, “Will anything be left to start over with when that’s done?” I suspect much of the Happy Talk from Legionary circles is due to the fear that, no, nothing will be left.

The task of Rome in this visitation will be to see if it’s possible to salvage what’s good there (meaning, basically, the faith in Christ and good works unwarped by the bizarre and controlling institutional command and control structure of denial, stunting of human development, and deceit imposed by Maciel and the minions who covered for him). One thing that immediately leaps out at me is that if the Legionaries want to be able to take a serious look in the mirror, they should divest themselves of control of the conversation in Catholic media (meaning “Sell their media holdings to some other group of orthodox Catholics who will not transform them into organs faithful to Vatican III, but will also not be compromised by what Fr. Berg calls ‘the Legion’s corporate inability to engage in a healthy self-critique.'”)

Meanwhile, we hope. Every Legionary I have ever met or known has been a great person, dedicated to Christ and trying to do his best to be a good disciple. I can’t believe God would let all that good will just go to waste and reward people who have given their lives in service to Him with a slap in the face and “Game Over”. And, since God’s pretty much in the redemption biz and can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear like pagan Rome, anything is possible. At any rate, I thank God on my knees it’s not my problem to clean up and I wish all the good Legionaries well.